


Body and Soul

by icarus_chained



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Attraction, Body Image, Demisexuality, F/M, Identity, Introspection, Memories, Panic, Realisation, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, Sexual Identity, sudden attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:22:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27606911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Nick was in trouble here. Oh, he was in trouble. And he really hoped he hadn't been obvious about it.(Or, reasons it might be slightly traumatising to suddenly experience sexual attraction for the first time when you already have a plethora of identity issues and have spent north of 80 years inhabiting a mechanical body that did not at any point lead you to expect thatthat might be a thing)
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine
Comments: 26
Kudos: 87





	Body and Soul

Nick was not, generally speaking, a man too proud to admit when he was in trouble. Admittedly, mostly because it was usually obvious. You got yourself locked up in a vault while some mafia goons debated killing you, it was pretty clear you weren’t having the best day, you know?

But this time. This time, oh, he was in trouble all right. And it wasn’t obvious. 

At least he goddamn _hoped_ it wasn’t obvious. He’d like to have this little meltdown in semi-privacy, thanks. Or as much as you could get in a shack in the middle of nowhere with your partner asleep across the way.

He just … He hadn’t even known this was a thing that could still happen. He was made of wires and metal, dammit! He was missing several extremely pertinent parts! And, sure, he _remembered_ certain sensations. Could imagine a nice few more. But memory and imagination, while wonderful things, couldn’t exactly overwrite physical reality, could they? 

(Well. Yes and no. But let’s not tread too far down into the long dark teatimes of the self, all right?)

The point of the matter was, his body did not do this. It _couldn’t_ do this. Eighty damn years on, something in that vicinity, he would have _known_. He knew every nut and bolt screwing his rickety old frame together. He’d fished around in every damned orifice the thing had, and several more that the wasteland had added later. He’d had his hands in everything shy of his brain, and other people had had that one covered too. There was nothing, _nothing in it_ , that could make sensations like these. Not like this.

At least, nothing that ever had before.

He didn’t know why it upset him so much. Why it angered him, _frightened_ him. Pulled up other sensations, phantom sensations. His chest tightening. Heart labouring, breath growing short. They were memories too, those. He didn’t have either of the organs in question anymore. He supposed the other thing could be a memory as well. But it wasn’t …

It didn’t feel like it. It didn’t. It wasn’t Nick’s old memories, the echoes of a long-lost human body. Most of those had faded, at least when it came to physical sensations. There was just … too much reality out here. He’d lived in this body too much. Like he’d said. He’d had his hands all over it. He knew the shape of it, had mapped the metal bones and hard plastic motor covers, the rubber-and-copper of the wires running along his skeleton. Traced every remaining sensor in what was left of his skin. Run diagnostics, over and over and over again. Knocked dodgy joints back into place, tightened recalcitrant screws, glued over the edges of tears so the rest of him wouldn’t fray. He was a self-made man these days, in many ways. Or at least a self- _repaired_ man.

He knew what things were supposed to feel like. He might be a bucket of bolts, but his body was still his body. It _belonged_ to him. He lived in it. It was battered, it was decaying, more and more of it was getting knocked out or replaced every year, but it was still his. He wasn’t Nick Valentine, not the one who’d died, no matter his memories. When he pictured himself, he didn’t picture the human. He pictured _him_. Synth detective. Decaying metal jackass.

He pictured his body. As ugly as it was, as scarred and skeletal and mismatched, it was still what he saw in his head. It was what he knew as himself. It belonged to him. It was _his_.

He thought sometimes about the thing Miss Curie had done. Putting her mind into a new frame, a new body. Honestly, the idea terrified him a little bit. All right, a lot. The thought of it. He had enough trouble holding onto himself as it was. Enough trouble telling what were the echoes of a man 200 years dead, and what was there to be a person now. Without his body, his frame … Put Nick’s memories into a Gen-3, and would it still be Nick at all? Him-Nick, Synth-Nick. Or would it be someone else? Nick 3.0. Another personality to play out pre-war memories in a post-apocalyptic world? A new person with not one but two sets of foreign memories in his head?

He still sort of wondered when it came to Curie. Whether there was some remnant of G5-19 under there. Not memories, necessarily, but … People learned from experience, right? What they went through wrote itself on their bodies, their brains. Was there a part of Curie that would see a Courser, some day, and feel some unexplained, atavistic terror? 

He supposed he wondered that with all of them, though. Every synth who’d ever had themselves rewritten. Was there something under the memories or lack thereof? Something that made a person a _person_ , more than just the sum of what they remembered?

He had to hope so, honestly. Had to think so. Wipe people away, over and over and over again, and there still had to be something under it. Some combination of body and memory and soul. Nick wasn’t the man who’d died two centuries ago, after all. That man’s soul had been blown to whatever afterlife there was in a bloom of nuclear hellfire. Nick’s, too, when he finally got himself shot all to pieces, would move on as well, to whatever hell or heaven there happened to be for synths. That much he did believe in, honestly and fervently. People were people, no matter what nuts and bolts were used to make them up.

A body wasn’t a soul. Tangled up as they were, he didn’t think the soul came automatically with the skin, either. The body was just the thing the soul would get shot out of when it came to it. He just … With Curie, particularly. When you started moving minds around. He didn’t know if the soul went with it. If Amari’s memory lounger, or the Institute’s for that matter, could carry more than just a mental imprint along for the ride.

Of course, if the mind and the soul wanted to go, maybe the soul could make its own way across. Maybe Curie had made that hop under her own power. Maybe G5-19 had made way for her to do so. Like organ donations, only more so. Or maybe G5-19, the parts of her that had mattered, had already been long gone. Like old Nick.

Maybe Nick’s soul, if the worst came to pass, could make a jump too, and be all right at the end.

But honestly? He’d rather not find out. He’d had enough of waking up with a body that didn’t match his memories. Enough years spent learning to reconcile the two, or move past them, or whatever mix of the two he’d sort of managed to get where he was today. Thanks, but … no thanks. He’d stick with what he had from here on out. He’d die with what he’d got. It was good enough. Beat-up, broke-down, but it was his body, his skin. He’d lived in it for decades now. It was good enough.

Or it had been. For years, decades, it had been. And now this. Now the silly old thing started _lying_ to him. Or had been lying to him from the start. He didn’t know how to handle that. He didn’t even know where to begin.

So much for not wandering through the long dark teatimes, huh? 

He curled his skinny metal fingers into a fist. He was all right for a bit. She was asleep. Nora. Wouldn’t wake up for a while yet. They were all alone out here, not even a mole rat to bother anyone. He had some time for a bit more wandering yet. Before she noticed. God, he really hoped she hadn’t noticed. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

Not that he knew what the wrong idea _was_. Or the right one, either. He didn’t know what in the Sam Hill was happening to him. 

But he knew it was because of her. And he didn’t want her getting hurt by it. So.

He had to figure this out. Just … Just take it apart, just like normal, and figure it out. It couldn’t be that hard. He didn’t have lungs or a heart anymore. His chest wasn’t really getting tight. Just had to push past it, was all. Just had to figure things out.

It’d be easier if it was all like that. All phantoms. Echoes to be pushed through. If it was old Nick, floating up from the back of his brain, just to point out that … Well. That that was a damn fine woman right there. Presumably. Given the circumstances, Nick was _assuming_ that’s what this was. The message he was intended to get.

Except it wasn’t old Nick sending it to him. Human Nick, who at least had an excuse for that sort of thing, who had _experience_ of it. And parts. Can’t forget the parts. No matter how much Nick might _want_ to.

Because it wasn’t old Nick sending it. It was his body. His _synth_ body. His _Gen-2_ synth body. That did _not_ have parts. And had never given any goddamn indication that it might want them at any point before in his _goddamn eighty years_ on this irradiated earth. Just. Just to put the thing in context, you understand.

But it wasn’t memories. It wasn’t phantoms. The sensations, the things he felt. They were real. They showed up on his goddamn _diagnostics_. They were … They were real. At least sort of.

It was his sensors. In his skin. They got kicked into high gear. Like the whole remnants of his sensory map got lit up at once. When she pressed against him. That was … when he’d noticed it. When she’d pressed back into him. Some poor bastard had taken fright at him. At his mug. Pointed a gun. She’d snapped herself in front of him. Pressed him back, covering him with her whole body, her back and … and butt … a wall of heat against his front. A warm, live body, all quivering with fear and anger, protective fury, leaning back against him.

He’d shorted out. Some bit of his brain. His coolant system had stuttered. Kicked on, as if expecting combat, and then stuttered out again. Almost like it was confused. Bewildered. He knew the goddamn feeling. Every remaining inch of his skin started _humming_. Or all but humming. He’d felt every goddamn thing on the planet in those few seconds. Every breath of air and shift of muscle in the woman in front of him. A wall of sensation. No, a wave. Racing head to toe. Everything felt lit up. Scraped and on the edge of painful. Like pins and needles, maybe? 

A lot like pins and needles. In some senses. He’d had a thought, under the wave of it. He had an idea that if she’d turned. If she’d touched him. Differently. Something would have happened. Something like pain. It was the only real sensation his system was used to. The only function the sensors really had. To alert to damage. He’d felt, in that moment, that if she’d touched him it would have … made a sensation. Made one big enough to wipe him out.

Pins and needles. If you move, this is gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt _real bad_.

But his body hadn’t thought it was going to be pain. It had wanted to _lean in_. Not flinch away. His skin lit up. His systems raced. His coolant system fluttered in confusion. He’d felt an … an ache. Around the edges, especially. The places where his skin had been torn away. Like everything he had was trying to reach out. Knit together. Nerve to nerve. Sensor to sensor. So he could feel it better. So he could chase it all the way down. To … To whatever happened when she touched him. Whatever happened when she pushed the sensation past what he’d been made to endure.

It terrified him. It terrified him _so bad_. He’d shut down. Not completely. Obviously. Not all the way. He hadn’t left her alone out there. But he’d …

She probably had noticed. He’d been stuttering, when she pulled away from him. Nearly nonverbal. Clumsy and stumbling and unsure. She probably had to have noticed it. But he’d …

His body hadn’t like being shut down like that. Or ignored, maybe? Not shut down. He hadn’t been able to shut it down. His sensor net had still been live. High-keyed, feeling every shift in the air. The rub of his clothes, the grit in exposed joints. It had all felt … too much. Too big, too small. Stabbing into him. He’d been overexposed. Barely able to process. And he’d still …

He’d wanted to follow her. Wanted to lean into her. To _touch_. Chasing sensation. All the way down. To whatever happened at the end of it.

It had faded in fits and starts. When she backed up, gave him space. Let him throw out some small quip, he honestly couldn’t remember what, and scrape himself partly back together. He didn’t know what she thought had happened. He hoped … Well. He didn’t know what he hoped. That it hadn’t been obvious, at least. That she didn’t know she’d given him … or terrified him either.

No. Not that _she’d_ terrified him. That _it_ had terrified him. That his own stupid eighty-year-old _lying_ skin had just cut his legs from under him and left him quivering.

Why _now_? It hadn’t done that before. It had _never_ done that before. He’d had misfires. Malfunctions. Ghosts in the sensor net. Phantom sensations from the bits that were missing. All of that. But he’d never had his whole skin just up and fire like that. Never had his internal systems confusedly stumble up after it. Never had his brain grab onto something that felt … felt like it wanted to be pain, and _lean in_ like that. Want to chase it.

The bit of him that was him, _his_ memories, eighty-odd years’ worth, insisted that he’d die at the end of it. That it would be pain, it had to be pain, they weren’t built for anything else, and pain that big would wipe him out. He’d lived in this stupid bucket of bolts for decades. He knew how much pain it could handle. Riding that wave over would be too much. He’d die. Every atrophied survival instinct he possessed had insisted that.

But his skin. His brain. His stupid misfiring synthetic brain. Had insisted that he wouldn’t.

And his other memories. The old ones, from human Nick. They said he wouldn’t either. They said there was one obvious answer for why his whole body lit up when a woman pressed against him like that. They suggested that it might be a crying shame he didn’t have certain parts, because whatever inconveniences they might otherwise offer, they did provide a lovely means to accelerate that wave all the way up and over the edge.

And the worst of it, the very worst … was that Nick almost wanted to agree with that suggestion.

He didn’t know how to handle this. At all. He’d never … It hadn’t happened before. No one, man, woman or otherwise, had ever made his body do that before. He’d been bumped into a time or two. Pressed against. Even shoved down and sat on. He’d met some loonies in his time. But nada. He’d seen some gorgeous people. Spirits so bright they shone, bodies built to take joy in, but nothing. Absolutely nothing. For decades on end. Even Nora. She’d touched him before, and it had never done _that_. Until …

Until now. Until she shoved him back, pressed herself protectively against him, butt to … Ahem. Anyway. And suddenly his rickety old chassis got _ideas_. Out of the blue.

Ones that would kill him. Maybe. Ones that would tip him over, wipe him out. Shoot his soul off to join human Nick in whatever afterlife he was kicking around in. The whole thing felt like pins and needles. Like a warning _not to move_. Agony happens past this point. It felt like it might kill him. Chasing that wave. Following it down.

_But_ , an odd little voice whispered in his brain. Not Nick. Not human Nick, anyway. Something else. _But,_ it said. _What a way to go, hmm? What a way to go._

Which … was a point. Fair enough, yeah. It was _Nora_. Her body, her hands. Pressing against him. She’d … done so much for him. Showed him so much. Helped him so much. She was gorgeous. Her soul shone under her skin. And, aesthetically speaking, her skin was nothing to sneeze at either. Even if it killed him … Well. It was her. Would he honestly regret it, so long as it was her?

Which wasn’t the point either. He didn’t even know if she’d _want_ that. Well. Definitely not if it killed him. He knew her well enough to know that. But he doubted she’d want …

Like he said. He’d lived in this body for decades. His whole life. He knew what it was. Every inch of it. He needed it. He didn’t ever want another one. But he didn’t delude himself that it was anything anyone else would ever want or need or find pleasing. Not even the loonies. 

No. No, the question of what Nora might want was another one entirely, and in all likelihood would never be his concern. And what _he_ wanted …

Wouldn’t ever be hers. He hoped. So long as he hadn’t been obvious about it. Damn it.

He just … He needed to get a grip on himself, was all. Needed to understand. It was _his_ body. His feelings, his sensations. He just had to get to grips with them. They weren’t … He’d never felt them before. Gone decades without them. He just needed to deal with that. Figure out what they were. How they worked. What, ah. What stimulated them. Probably how to avoid that. 

Or how to … He could try? Not with Nora, god no, but if they showed up on their own …?

And god, he didn’t even know what he was _thinking_. He was nearly a century old, that he could remember at least, and that wasn’t counting old Nick’s extra years, and whatever he might have forgotten along the way. He was _too damn old_ to be fooling around with this sort of thing. He was a _synth_. A bucket of nuts and bolts. This was … It was nonsense, it was …

Hell. It was nothing he knew what to do with, was what it was. He didn’t know if it changed anything. How much it changed anything. How much it _should_. 

Maybe it wouldn’t even be an issue after Nora. Assuming he survived her, which … which honestly, he wasn’t that keen on. Nobody else had ever wrung this out of him. Once she moved on, he likely … Well. He probably wouldn’t need to worry about it again. There couldn’t be more than one Nora in a man’s life. He wouldn’t survive it. He was barely managing to survive the first one.

But it was … His body had betrayed him. Decades on, all the scrapes they’d been through together, and it had turned on him like this. Blindsided him completely. And it might _keeping doing so_. If he stayed with her. If she kept touching him. And she wasn’t shy about touching him. And he didn’t _want_ her to be shy about touching him. Both … Both him, for his own reasons, and the bit of his addled synth brain that had clearly taken a whole new shine to the idea. 

But god, he didn’t want her to ever figure it out, either. That wasn’t something she needed to know. She might be hurt by it. She might be _scared_ by it. Or … Or disgusted. He didn’t think he’d survive it if she was disgusted. He’d _understand_ , god knew, but he wouldn’t survive it.

It was … It wasn’t surprising that it was her. In hindsight. Maybe it took him a while to work up to it. Took a while for his brain and his body to start considering it. It was surprising, shocking, that he _could_. But it wasn’t surprising that it was her. There’d been … no one in his life like her. No one who meant so much, so fast. Who’d turned him upside down so completely, and made him so much happier for it. If it was going to be anyone, it was going to be her. That part wasn’t shocking.

Just, you know, everything else. The whole damn thing except that. He didn’t, he didn’t know what to do, here. Didn’t know what to think. He leaned against a concrete wall. Let the chill of it, through those same damned sensors, try to calm him down. Let it leech some of the shakes out of him. He didn’t know what to do about this.

Maybe he oughta leave. Her. Leave her. Before she figured it out. Maybe he should just ignore it. Hope it was a once-off, a misfire, and hope it just went away again. Maybe he even ought to … to try it out. He didn’t want to freeze out here, leave her vulnerable, if it was going to happen again. Maybe he should try and get a handle on it. At home, maybe, in private. Or take a while off. Go for a damned vacation in Goodneighbour, like everyone else, and take himself for a whirl. Just to see if that even worked.

The thought didn’t excite him any. If he was being honest here. The thought didn’t do a thing for him at all. Only … if he pictured Nora. If he remembered that wall of warmth along his front. _Then_ , maybe. But that …

He didn’t think he ought to use her like that. Even in his head. It didn’t feel right at all.

Not that anything did. Not that a single thing felt right about any of this. He was too old for this sort of problem. He was too old to even know where to start looking for a way out of it. Honestly, why now? Why had his stupid collection of struts and sensors picked _now_? Couldn’t the silly old thing have waited until he was safely dead? But no. Apparently not.

He leaned back against the wall. Crossed his arms, stared sightlessly out into the darkness. Across the figure, lying across the way. Nora, sleeping in the dark, sweet and easy under his watch. The woman every bit of him, heart and soul and now apparently body, had spent a couple of months growing increasingly silly over. If there was a solution to that, he didn’t know it. And he didn’t think the darkness was going to miraculously supply one either.

In short, he was in trouble here. Oh, was he ever in trouble. And he didn’t think a hell-on-wheels dame in a blue vault suit was going to get him out of this one.

He just had to hope she never realised how far she’d gotten him _into_ it.

Damn, but he hoped he hadn’t been obvious out there. He really, really did.

**Author's Note:**

> Um. I have a couple of issues with the whole 'give Nick a Gen-3 body' idea, which slipped in a bit. Apologies for that!


End file.
